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TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS AND WARNINGS
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Saturday, 2 July 2011

Bath salt patients showing up at hospitals across area

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Until recently, Dr. John Zimmerman never had treated anyone for the effects of bath salts.

Most people, even some doctors, he said, probably didn't even know what they were.

But in the past six months, Zimmerman said, Genesis HealthCare System hospitals where he works in emergency medicine have admitted between 12 and 20 people because of the salts -- three or four of them to the intensive care unit. Another 10 or so have come in with symptoms and have been treated as outpatients, he said.

On Thursday, a 33-year-old Zanesville woman was found dead in her hotel room at the EconoLodge on Seventh Street.

Police found illegal drugs, drug paraphernalia and an open container of bath salts in her room, said Detective Sgt. Ric Roush of the Zanesville Police Department.

The role bath salts played in her death is unknown, Roush said, and this is the first case of bath salts the ZPD has handled that has involved a death.

Originally derived from a plant grown in Africa, the bath salts people are using now are completely synthetic, Zimmerman said. The dangerous ingredient, methylenedioxypyrovalerone, or MDPV, produces effects similar to cocaine and LSD, he said, but "it's much more dangerous than just getting people high."

Among other symptoms, the bath salts, which are legal, cause hallucinations, paranoia and suicidal thoughts. They also can produce effects similar to a heart attack, he said.

"These people (using bath salts) can be dangerous, because they lose touch with reality, they lack judgment," Zimmerman said. "And some of these effects do not go away."

Zimmerman treated his first bath salt patient about a month ago. A man came into the emergency room hallucinating and acting paranoid, he said. Zimmerman was able to treat him as an outpatient with antipsychotic drugs, but it doesn't always end that way, he said.

Other than as a drug, Zimmerman said, bath salts have no use. The problem, he said, is they are cheap and can be bought over the counter.

"So people are abusing it by injecting it, smoking it, inhaling it, shooting it up," he said.

At the hospital, Zimmerman said, doctors have no way to test for the salts, so doctors have to treat patients based on symptoms.

The Ohio Department of Health isn't tracking the total number of deaths in Ohio involving the salts.

"This new thing with bath salts is becoming an ever-increasing problem," Roush said. "There absolutely has to be something done quickly to outlaw the use and sale of bath salts.

"Believe me, it's not just here. It's all over the country."

Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz is seeing the effects of the salts, too.

Bath salts have been the subject of a lot of media coverage of bath salts lately, he said. Once the hallucinogenic effects became public knowledge -- along with the fact the salts are legal to snort or inject and can be bought over the counter -- the office saw a rise in cases.

In several cases, Lutz said, the department arrested a suspect on other charges then later found out bath salts were involved, as well.

Neither the ZPD nor the sheriff's office could provide numbers of cases they have handled involving bath salts.

The Ohio House and Senate passed a bill this week banning six common ingredients found in bath salts. These are synthetic derivatives of MDPV which, pending Gov. John Kasich's approval, will be added to the list of illegal hallucinogenic substances.

At least 10 states have made bath salts illegal.

But while the salts still are legal in Ohio, Melanie Richert, chief probation officer for the Muskingum Adult Probation Department, said her office already is taking steps to stop their use among probationers. She couldn't put a percentage or number on it, but she said probationer use of bath salts is "prevalent."

"I would say that it's having the same effect on this county and department as it is in a general sense throughout the entire country," she said.

Richert wouldn't say whether probationers are being tested for the synthetic ingredients found in bath salts, but she said officers discourage them from using the salts, just as they with do with any other drug.

Whether it's legal or not, "anything that can be used as a hallucinogenic intoxicant, that can alter your state of being, would be unacceptable when on probation," she said.

If Kasich does sign the bill, it won't eliminate the use of bath salts altogether, Roush said, but it will deter people and make the salts more difficult to buy.

It's a step in the right direction, he said.

Zimmerman just hopes people learn the negative side effects of the salts and the problem doesn't worsen.

But for those with addictive personalities, he said, it will be hard to stop.

"It's like crack. Once you try it, you crave it," he said.

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